It’s exchanges like this one that only feed the hype urging Kerry to tap McCain as a running mate.
McCain recently questioned the wisdom of cutting taxes and fighting a war at the same time, an unprecedented stunt in American history.
“Throughout our history, wartime has been a time of sacrifice…. What have we sacrificed?” McCain said. “As mind-boggling as expanding Medicare has been, nothing tops my confusion for cutting taxes during wartime. I don’t remember ever in the history of warfare when we cut taxes.”
In yet another example of how nervous Republicans are starting to turn on each other, House Speaker Dennis Hastert took a rare public swipe at his colleague.
Asked Wednesday about McCain’s remarks, Hastert, who was rejected for military service because of a bad shoulder, first joked: “Who? Where’s he from? A Republican?”
Then, more seriously, he said: “If you want to see sacrifice, John McCain ought to visit our young men and women at Walter Reed and Bethesda [two Washington-area military hospitals]. There’s the sacrifice in this country. We’re trying to make sure that they have the ability to fight this war, that they have the wherewithal to be able to do it. And at the same time, we have to react to keep this country strong not only militarily but economically. We want to be able to have the flexibility to do it. That’s my reply to John McCain.”
It’s as if he’s daring McCain to leave the GOP.
Keep in mind, there’s some insulting about Hastert lecturing McCain about the sacrifice made by injured troops. Hastert dodged the Vietnam draft while McCain is a decorated veteran who spent five years in a North Vietnamese prison. Where does Hastert find the gall?
For that matter, if the House Speaker wants to insist that fiscal responsibility is entirely incompatible with being a “real” Republican, I’m delighted. I’ve been saying the same thing for years.
It was this point, not that Hastert knows almost nothing about military sacrifice, that McCain chose to emphasize in response.
“The speaker is correct in that nothing we are called upon to do comes close to matching the heroism of our troops,” McCain said. “All we are called upon to do is not spend our nation into bankruptcy while our soldiers risk their lives. I fondly remember a time when real Republicans stood for fiscal responsibility. Apparently those days are long gone for some in our party.”
Yes they are. But you know, there happens to be another party who embraces fiscal responsibility. I think McCain may have heard of it.
“I believe my party has gone astray,” McCain said [in April], singling out GOP stands on environmental issues and racial set-asides.
“I think the Democratic Party is a fine party, and I have no problems with it, in their views and their philosophy,” he said.